The Arena (20 page)

I
was sitting
at my desk, having a few drinks. Probably not the best time for me to be drinking, but sometimes when the shit hit the fan, I liked to indulge myself. How could this have possibly happened? A death in the arena committed by the very student I had placed there. No matter how far I distanced myself from what happened, I kept going back to the fact that my plan had killed a Councilman’s son. There was only one way this could end, badly.

As I sat there, all I could do was pour another drink. I had two calls coming and neither of them were going to be a pleasant experience. Both of them would test my abilities to bend the truth and to shade the events of what happened. How could I tell a man his son’s death wasn’t my fault? How would I be able to explain that I had used someone I professed to serve? It was going to be a long night; maybe the fear would help keep me sober.

When the phone rang, I felt myself jump. Not my finest moment, but I was scared and I wasn’t sure which call it was going to be. I waited a few moments, composing myself, before I picked up the phone. “This is Stillman.”

The silence seemed to hang in the air. Finally the person on the other end of the line spoke. “You helped kill my son, you bastard! For that, I will see everything that you have burn.”

There was no good way to answer an accusation like that, especially when it was true. I had to go on the attack and quickly. “Councilman Darden, do you remember what you said to me before I pulled every string imaginable to get your son back into the academy?”

Only silence greeted me.

“Since you are being so quiet, let me remind you.
My son will win
, is what you told me.
My son is one of the best fighters at the academy
, you said. You even tried to turn down the gifts we gave you to help your son succeed. So when you blame me for your son’s death, I think it is only because he failed you so greatly. You assured me he could handle the task, we put our faith in you, and now you try and lay the blame at my feet?”

I started to think the Councilman must have hung up, but then the faintest sound reached my ears. He was sobbing ever so softly. The Councilman moved closer to the phone as he started to speak again. “You should have told me who he was up against; you should have told me so I could have stopped him.”

“You knew who he would be fighting; I remember very clearly when I summoned the Demon to locate the boy. That alone should have told you how formidable an opponent he could possibly be. I would also like to remind you at this time that our previous conversations have been recorded, and if anything happens to me, they will be released to the people you want to have them the least.”

This time his response came almost instantly. “What is it you want, Stillman?”

“What I want is for you to gracefully give up your seat on the Council. Say that you need more time to spend with your family after the tragic loss of your son. Then I want you to put my name forward for your seat.”

“You bastard! Is this what you planned all along, to have my son murdered and to take my seat on the Council? I’ll do what you want, but know this: I will never forgive you for what you have done, and you will be hunted.”

The line went dead.

I knew that, somehow, I had managed to win that round. I was still alive, and soon I would be moving up to the highest position a man could attain: a seat on the Council. The cost was high, but it could prove to be worth it. I took another long drink. My night was not over yet; I still had one more call to deal with. This one, I feared, would not go as smoothly as the first one. This time I would be forced to eat a huge helping of humble pie; even then, it might not be enough to save me.

I had to convince him that I had not betrayed him. If I failed, this would be my last night alive. I knew for a fact that he would not hesitate to come to my home and kill every single one of us.

Before that call came in, I had some work to do. You never knew who could be listening, and while I should have checked before my last call, pouring a drink had seemed slightly more important. I used a small piece of equipment to check the room for electronic anomalies. The beep told me the room was free of any kind of surveillance equipment. I pulled out my laptop and opened another program to run a trace on my phone line; after thirty seconds, it came back telling me the line was clear. All this new technology was tough to get used to, but my men assured me that it was needed.

This time when the phone rang, my veins filled with ice. This would be the call that truly determined my fate. “Stillman.”

“Stillman, is this a secure line?”

“Yes, Adam, it is. I knew you would be calling, and I made sure we were clear.”

“You have some explaining to do,” Adam growled.

“Tell me what you would like to know?”

“Don’t play smart with me, boy, or I might come down there just to reaffirm what kind of relationship we have. You had better be one-hundred-percent truthful in your answer, or else I’ll finally pay you the visit you earned eighteen years ago. Then I can ask the question again, this time with you strapped to a table.”

I muted my phone and took a deep breath to calm myself. This was already going worse than I had planned. I took the phone off mute and spilled my guts. I told Adam everything: summoning the Demon, getting Jackson into the academy, the strings I pulled to get Ted back into the academy at the Council’s request, and finally about my new seat on the Council itself. When I finished, I took a long hard swallow of my drink. My life hung in the balance; nothing would stop him now if he felt like I had fully betrayed him.

Before Adam could speak, I whispered into the phone. “We had to know, didn’t we? Was there any other way to find out if he was the chosen one?”

The line remained silent longer than I would have liked. Then Adam spoke. “I think I have left you in the position of turncoat too long; maybe it is time to bring you back into the fold. It seems you have forgotten what it means to be a member of the Ascendancy. How could you risk the lives of two young men on a hunch? When I contact you again, you had better be ready to make the move.”

The line went dead again; that was the second time tonight I had been hung up on. It was starting to wear on my nerves. I was still alive, but for how long? Would Adam truly call me in when I had finally achieved what he had always wanted, a spy on the Council? He was right; I had overstepped, but I had also accomplished his overall goal and my own.

I started to wonder now if I had accomplished something else. It dawned on me that I could have just put in place a path to fill our world with Demons. Had I been tricked into fulfilling Adramelech’s needs and not my own? I couldn’t think of it any more tonight. Every time I turned my mind back to that time, I just heard the Demon’s laughter.

W
hen I felt
Adam’s spell break, my ears popped again.
We have a landing, Houston
. I looked over and watched as he stood up and made his way back toward me. When he saw me watching him, the hard lines on his face melted away and were replaced with a concerned look. I fell back into the couch, still thinking about what he had just said. My mind was trying to process everything he had told me. It was just so much information. My life to this point had been a lie. I wanted to be angry, to be scared, but all I felt was a sense of relief. I was finally where I was supposed to be and the truth was out there.

Had I just seen my mother and father in a dream, or was it a vision? I wondered if what I’d seen had actually happened. I had so many questions I wanted to ask. Would Adam tell me the truth, or was he going to lie to me? At this point, there wasn’t much I could do but trust him. I had made my decision when I joined the Ascendancy here. There was no turning back from it now.

Before I could ask anything, Adam started to speak. “Well, this clearly changes everything.”

Seriously, what did this change? Who says stuff like that? It was almost as if he got lost inside of his own thoughts and forgot I was even there in the room with him. “So what does this change?”

Adam’s eyes fell on me, obviously being pulled from some internal memory. “There is a prophecy that says when a child is born between a Gifted and a Lycan that Demons will rise again. It was thought that it would be almost nearly impossible for that to happen. Both races have extremely low fertility rates, and that would only matter if it was even possible for a Gifted and a Lycan to have a child together at all. The Council further ensured those odds by starting a war against their kind after the prophecy was foretold.”

Adam favored me with a kind smile before continuing. “I had renewed our relationship with the Lycans here in America, much to the Council’s displeasure. In the early 1900s, I had such a couple working under me, and they helped to stop the Demons while falling deeply in love. The Council worked to break apart our organization, and with the help of a spy, that same couple was eventually killed. I always thought their son died with them, but here you are today.”

I had to take a moment to think about what Adam had just said. My father was clearly one of the Gifted, and that made my mom . . . what? A werewolf. I wondered what that would mean for me. Obviously I had inherited use of the gift; would I also inherit something from my mother? Did Adam say 1900s? That would have made my parents at least one hundred years old when they had me. “So what does that mean for me? In class, it seemed as if the Lycans were our enemies and we would be hunting them.”

Adam slowly moved back to his chair and sat down. “I guess that remains to be seen. Our move away from the Council has bought us some additional time, but it won’t last forever. Eventually they will come for you. If your last battle in the arena was any indication, they already have. As for who your mother was, it won’t mean a thing in the Ascendancy. We have worked with the Lycans in the past, and now, without the Council’s oversight, hopefully we will again. You could probably tell that the teaching material had a heavy Council influence. Now we can break away from that and teach you the way we truly operate.”

He let those words sink in before continuing. “We have to move forward and work at reestablishing old alliances. It will be harder for us to do so than ever before. The betrayal that killed your parents also affected many of our Lycan partners. I doubt they will be eager to work with us again. We also need to get you and the rest of the students ready to defend yourselves. Without the fear of the Council to shield us, we have become targets for both the Gifted and the Pretenders.”

That was a lot to take in, and I was still thinking about my vision. So the Council might send other Gifted to fight us. To kill us? We also had to worry about enforcing the accords and policing the Pretenders. Not to mention, Demons had reentered the world. This wasn’t going to be easy, but nothing in life that mattered was.

Adam watched me before speaking again. “We need to prepare the students for what is coming. Now is the time we shift the focus on how you learn and where you learn it. Students need to learn out in the world instead of in class. The Demons will be setting up seats of power until they are ready to strike us again. The road ahead is filled with danger, and you especially will be tested many times. Surround yourself with people you can trust.”

My entire life until now had felt like a struggle. Thinking that I was losing my mind had only been the beginning. The loss of family and friends still haunted me, but now I had new friends—in time, maybe a new family. Adam was looking at the negative. There would be dark days ahead, but there would also be life, and love.

I turned my thoughts back to Adam. “Can you tell me more about the prophecy?”

“I have already addressed most of it.” He rubbed his beard in thought. “Your visions have shown you some of the events that led to where we are now. Your parents falling in love, a pact made with the Demons, the battle in the arena, and finally the rise of a greater Demon. Outside of that, the prophecy is really not clear. It could go in either direction, based on the different paths you choose. The redeemer or the destroyer—in the end the choice will be yours.”

I was still thinking back to my vision of my parents. Other than seeing their picture for a brief moment, I had never seen them. I wanted to burn their image into my mind. I never wanted to forget what they looked like again.

Now I had to start to focus on what was coming my way. Life was going to get harder now. I was being thrust into another situation that I did not fully understand. Whatever happened, at least I had friends who would stand by me. Friends who would dedicate their lives to making sure the Demons never had a chance to win.

A knock sounded at the door, and Adam spoke. “Ah, it looks like we have company.”

I was happy to see April and Marcus walk in. Both of them were beaming. I couldn’t help but smile back. Then I saw a face peek around Marcus’s back before rushing toward me. Britta! As I was thinking her name, her warm body slammed into me, wrapping me into a hug. It seemed a near-death experience also earned you a kiss on the cheek, which I accepted gracefully—if turning beet red counts as being graceful.

Marcus broke my embarrassment by saying, “It’s good to see you again, bro; we all thought you were dead for sure.”

“I’ll take that as you are happy to see me, and not as a slight on my magical prowess.”

“Good, because that is exactly what it was.”

I looked at April and Marcus. “If not for you two, I probably would have been dead. The training and extra work we did together is really what kept me alive.”

Britta just sat there holding my hand. I got the impression she felt like if she let go, I would disappear. Marcus was eyeing the staff I was holding, and April just kept giving Adam nervous glances. I had a feeling she hadn’t expected to be so close to the leader of the Ascendancy again so quickly.

Adam made a motion for me to join him at his desk for a moment. He had silently moved toward it as we had been talking. He placed a box on his desk and pushed it toward me. “Take this with you when you go, and for God’s sake, keep it safe. It belonged to your father.”

“Thank you again, Adam, for giving me these things. I’d like to come back and talk with you about my parents sometime.”

I could see the sadness in his eyes. I knew speaking of them was hard for him. I wanted to find out why. “That can be arranged.”

He motioned for us to leave. I tossed my staff over to Marcus so I could carry the box with both hands. “Let’s head back to my room so we can talk.”

April and Marcus led the way. Britta walked next to me as we made our way back to my room. Once we were securely inside, I let out a deep breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding in. I was alive, and I had friends who cared about me. There was one question burning in my mind.
What’s in the box?

Marcus called down to the kitchen while I headed back to take a quick shower and get cleaned up. I hoped that the kitchen would make an exception for us and send up some food. After being awake for a while now, I was starting to feel famished. The water eased away some of the stress that was left behind from the fight. With a clean set of clothes on, I made my way back out to my friends.

I was happy to see, when I entered my living room, that all three of them were having a conversation together. I had been worried that April and Marcus wouldn’t want Britta around. I was ecstatic to find out that wasn’t the case. I continued my walk into the room; the smell of warm garlic bread and a hint of sausage let me know a huge bowl of pasta was coming my way.

I took a seat on the couch next to Britta, and she slid the box Adam had given me into my lap. I just sat there staring at it.

Marcus broke the tension. “Seriously, bro, open it already.”

I let out a little chuckle as I unlatched the lock. Opening the box revealed two short swords wrapped in an oilskin cloth. They were about the size of the escrima sticks that April and I trained with on a regular basis. There was also a leather harness wedged into the end of the box. I stood up and set the box down on the ground, removing one of the blades. I spun it around in my hand before passing it around the room for everyone to check out.

April picked up the sword and spun it around. “The balance on this seems perfect, Jackson. Whoever your father was, he had excellent taste in his blades.”

I smiled inwardly at the thought that one day I would walk into battle with my father’s swords strapped to my back. I looked around the room at all of my friends and felt a sense of being at the right place at the right time fall over me. I was going to need them going forward, more so than ever before.

All of us headed to the table, ready to chow down on some pasta. As we sat around the table stuffing our faces full of garlicky goodness, I filled in my friends on what Adam had told me. The mood changed slightly at the reveal of all that was to come, but not in the way I expected. April’s eyes sparkled at the thought of the battles to come. She was a true warrior. Marcus looked like he was in deep thought. As much as he liked to pretend to be completely laid back, he planned out almost everything. Britta looked slightly shocked, but she placed a hand on my leg and gave it a little squeeze. I knew she would stand beside me as our relationship grew.

The road ahead was going to be filled with ups and downs, and it was more than likely that one of us would eventually end up dead. No matter what happened, I would stand and fight, and it felt better knowing I had people who would stand by my side.

The darkness was coming, and I was ready.